Play and Performance broadens the understanding of what play is. The chapters cover an array of practices that can be seen across the play to performance continuum, providing advocates, researchers, and practitioners a wealth of practical and theoretical ideas for expanding the use of performance as a tool.

Vygotsky at Work and Play is an intimate portrayal of the Vygotskian-inspired approach to human development known as ‘social therapeutics’ and ‘the psychology of becoming’. Holzman provides an accessible, practical-philosophical portrayal of a unique performance-based methodology of development and learning that draws upon a fresh reading of Vygotsky. This expanded edition includes new content dealing with how Lev Vygotsky’s work can be applied to profound social issues of our times, including worsening police/community relations, authoritarianism in schools, the medical-model approach to social/emotional life, and the erosion of play in Western cultures. Holzman also weaves together Vygotsky’s discoveries with qualitative case studies from organizations that practice the approach in psychotherapy offices, classrooms, outside-of-school programs, corporate workplaces and virtual learning environments. The new edition of Vygotsky at Work and Play poses a practical-critical challenge to more traditional conceptions and methods of psychology and education, introducing performance as a new ontology and the author’s own activist research performance as a new way to do psychology. It is an essential read for researchers and professionals in educational and developmental psychology, psychotherapy, cultural historical activity, social science, performance studies and education.

This book highlights the variety of ways in which sociology brings about social change in community settings, assists nonprofit and social service organizations in their work, and influences policy at the local, regional, and national levels. It also spotlights sociology that informs the general public on key policy issues through media and creates research centers that develop and carry out collaborative research. The book details a broad range of sociology projects. The 33 case studies are divided into 8 sections. Each section also includes sidebars of include non-sociologists writing about the impact of selected research projects. In some cases these are interdisciplinary projects since solutions to social problems are often multifaceted and do not fit into the disciplines as defined by universities. Further, it emphasizes actions and connections. This is not armchair sociology where self-proclaimed public sociologists just write articles suggesting what government, corporations, communities, or others "ought to do." The authors are interested in the active connections to publics and users of the research, not the passive research process.

The Second Edition of The Handbook of Community Practice is expanded and updated with a major global focus and serves as a comprehensive guidebook of community practice grounded in social justice and human rights. It utilizes community and practice theories and encompasses community development, organizing, planning, social change, policy practice, program development, service coordination, organizational cultural competency, and community-based research in relation to global poverty and community empowerment. This is also the first community practice text to provide combined and in-depth treatment of globalization and international development practice issues—including impacts on communities in the United States and on international development work. The Handbook is grounded in participatory and empowerment practices, including social change, social and economic development, feminist practice, community-collaborative, and engagement in diverse communities. It utilizes the social development perspective and employs analyses of persistent poverty, asset development, policy practice, and community research approaches as well as providing strategies for advocacy and social and legislative action. The handbook consists of forty chapters which challenge readers to examine and assess practice, theory, and research methods. As it expands on models and approaches, delineates emerging issues, and connects policy and practice, the book provides vision and strategies for local to global community practice in the coming decades. The handbook will continue to stand as the central text and reference for comprehensive community practice, and will be useful for years to come as it emphasizes direction for positive change, new developments in community approaches, and focuses attention on globalization, human rights, and social justice. It will continue to be used as a core text for multiple courses within programs, will have long term application for students of community practice, and will provide practitioners with new grounding for development, planning, organizing, and empowerment and social change work.

This issue of New Directions for Evaluation addresses the topic of evaluation policy, especially how it is informed by and affects evaluation practice. An evaluation policy is any rule or principle that a group or organization uses to guide its decisions and actions when doing evaluation. Every group and organization that engages in evaluation, including government agencies, private businesses, and nonprofit organizations, has evaluation policies. Sometimes they are formal, explicit, and written; at other times they are more implicit and ad hoc principles or norms that have simply evolved over time. Evaluation policy is a critically important issue for the field and profession of evaluation. Evaluation policies profoundly affect the day-to-day work of all evaluators. Many recent and current controversies or conflicts in the field of evaluation can be viewed, at least in part, as struggles around evaluation policy. The chapters in this issue consider evaluation policy in its many and varied settings and contexts, including extensive treatment of large-scale national evaluation policy both in the United States and in Europe. The issue brings together revised and extended versions of all of the key addresses in the presidential strand of the 2008 American Evaluation Association conference, including the presidential address, plenary speeches, and expert lectures. This is the 123rd volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly thematic journal New Directions for Evaluation, an official publication of the American Evaluation Association. The journal publishes empirical, methodological, and theoretical works on all aspects of evaluation. Each issue is devoted to a single topic, with contributions solicited, organized, reviewed, and edited by a guest editor or editors. Issues may take any of several forms, such as a series of related chapters, a debate, or a long article followed by brief critical commentaries

Although environmental policy and program evaluation emerged rather late compared to many other areas of public policy, an energetic evaluation community in the environmental field has emerged during the last decade. This is a community of evaluators with diverse backgrounds in environmental sciences, social sciences, and general evaluation. Evaluation in the environmental field is characterized by complex policies and programs around wicked problems. They exist within complex systems composed of interacting environmental and socioeconomic systems. In furthering the state of evaluation in the environmental field, this issue of focuses on key methodological challenges: OL {list-style:disc} P:{margin-left 60px} time horizons scaling data credibility research designs and counterfactuals Contributors look at each challenge with two chapters, to enhance a pluralistic discourse for development of the theory and practice of environmental evaluation. The authorsfrom Australia, Europe, and North Americarepresent the diversity of the community with respect to their formal training, personal experiences, and institutional affiliations. The issue concludes with two commentaries reflecting on the discussions in relation to that of contemporary evaluation in general and a summary of the insights for the future of environmental evaluation. These chapters cumulatively hold promise for furthering the quality of evaluations not only in the environmental field but in other fields as well. This is the 122nd volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Evaluation, an official publication of the American Evaluation Association.

This volume teams up familiar literature in knowledge utilization with related theories of diffusion, implementation, transfer, and translation. Each of these knowledge-for-action theories is reviewed for its disciplinary roots, assumptions about change, key variables, and contextual influences. Cross-talk among these heretofore parallel theories identifies priorities and implications for evaluation practice. This issue provides evaluators with multiple lenses to capture change, including a consideration of complexity, rather than succumb to single-discipline perceptions of value. If we think about the new knowledge enshrined within a policy or program under evaluation as the foreground, then complexity invites evaluators to think more critically about the background, that is, the dynamic properties of the setting or system into which a policy program is introduced and the implications this raises for evaluation. This is the 124th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Evaluation, an official publication of the American Evaluation Association.

The past decade brought forth a wave of excitement and promise for researchers and practitioners interested in community practice as an approach based on social justice principles and an embrace of community participatory actions. But, effective community practice is predicated on the availability and use of assessment methods that not only capture and report on conditions, but also simultaneously set the stage for social change efforts. This research, therefore, serves the dual purpose of generating knowledge and also being an integral part of social intervention. Research done in this way, however, requires new tools. Photovoice is one such tool - a form of visual ethnography that invites participants to represent their community or point of view through photographs, accompanied by narratives, to be shared with each other and with a broader community. Urban Youth and Photovoice focuses on the use of this method within urban settings and among adolescents and young adults - a group that is almost naturally drawn to the use of photography (especially digital and particularly in today's era of texting, facebook, and instagram) to showcase photovoice as an important qualitative research method for social workers and others in the social sciences, and providing readers with detailed theoretical and practical account of how to plan, implement, and evaluate the results of a photovoice project focused on urban youth.

Empowered youth CAN and DO make a difference! Young people become empowered by their participation in the institutions and decisions that affect their lives—which in turn can lead to real positive change in the community. Youth Participation and Community Change presents leading authorities providing the latest research and effective approaches on how young people can be drawn to participate in organizations and communities. The diverse perspectives discuss youth participation in today’s society, the models and methods of its practice, the roles of youth and adults, and the future of youth participation and community in a diverse democracy. Approaches include those which promote participatory community-based research and evaluation, and involve youth groups in poor and racially segregated areas. The mainstream view of much of today’s youth is that of being victims of society rather than a being a possible positive influence on society as a whole. Youth Participation and Community Change seeks to shift the viewpoint from youth as being problems to empowering them to enact positive social change. The book explores community agency efforts to involve young people, and the process by which youth civic engagement promotes empowerment. Social work and public health approaches are examined, with cogent discussions on conceptual and theoretical issues. Empirically based case studies illustrate best practices and interdisciplinary work that draws upon psychology, sociology, social work, public health, education, and related academic disciplines and professional fields. Topics in Youth Participation and Community Change include: key dimensions of critical youth empowerment a case study of youth leadership development in Hawaii—the Sariling Gawa Youth Council the Lexington Youth Leadership Academy—a leadership development and community change program a new model for youth civic engagement in Hampton, Virginia three projects that engage urban youth in community change through participatory research youth engagement strategies and the benefits of youth participation in health research ten projects which used photovoice to represent, advocate, and enhance community health a participatory action research process with youth in Bosnia and Herzegovina the Growing Up in Cities project of UNESCO training students as facilitators for the Youth Empowerment Strategies (YES!) project four characteristics of engagement in the research literature and a school-community-university project differences in developmental outcomes among youth organizing, identity-support, and traditional youth development agencies Youth Participation and Community Change is thought-provoking, enlightening reading that is perfect for organizers, planners, policymakers, advocates, youth service workers, agency administrators, educators, students, and professionals in psychology, sociology, social work, urban planning, public policy, and public health.

As novel, complex social problems increase, especially those involving vulnerable people who reside in challenging places, the limitations of conventional research methods implemented by just one or two investigators become apparent. Research and development alternatives are needed, particularly methods that engage teams of researchers in real world problem solving while simultaneously generating practice- and policy-relevant knowledge. Research methods that effectively tap the expertise of everyday people, especially those impacted by these targeted social problems, are a special priority because academic researchers often lack experiential knowledge that stems from direct, everyday encounters with these vexing problems. Participatory action research (PAR) responds to these manifest needs. It provides a methodological structure and operational guidelines for preparing and deploying people from various walks of life as co-researchers, and it provides a proven strategy for generating practice- and policy-relevant knowledge as problem-solving in real world contexts proceeds.

To understand and more creatively capture the social world, visual methods have increasingly become used by researchers in the social sciences and education. However, despite the rapid development of visual-based knowledge, and despite the obvious links between human movement and visual forms of understanding, visual research has been scarce in the fields of physical culture and physical education pedagogy. This groundbreaking book is the first to mark a "visual turn" in understanding and researching physical culture and pedagogies, offering innovative, image-based research that reveals key issues in the domains of sport, health, and physical education studies. Integrating visual research into physical culture and pedagogy studies, the book provides the reader with different ways of "seeing", looking at, and critically engaging with physical culture. Since human movement is increasingly created, established, and pedagogized beyond traditional educational sites such as schools, sport clubs, and fitness gyms, the book also explores the notion of visual pedagogy in wider physical culture, helping the reader to understand how visual-based technologies such as television, the internet, and mobile phones are central to people’s engagement with physical culture today. The book demonstrates how the visual creates dynamic pedagogical tools for revealing playful forms of embodiment, and offers the reader a range of visual methods, from researcher-produced photo analysis to participatory-centred visual approaches, that will enhance their own study of physical culture. Pedagogies, Physical Culture and Visual Methods is important reading for all advanced students and researchers with an interest in human movement, physical education, physical culture, sport studies, and research methods in education.

Author: United Nations. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
Publisher: United Nations Publications
ISBN: 9211203546
Release Date: 2003
Genre: Medical

The Asian and Pacific region has some of the world's toughest laws against drug abuse and drug trafficking, yet drug use amongst young people is increasing, with the starting age as low as 12 years old in some countries. Issued jointly by UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and UN Office on Drugs and Crime, this publication examines how to plan and deliver effective treatment and rehabilitation programmes for adolescent substance users. Sections consider: treatment approaches to youth drug use, analysis of risk and protective factors, examples of successful intervention, treatment and aftercare programmes, and implications for programme development.